ABSTRACT
The King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern province was established with the aim of housing knowledge that will inspire people to read, learn and create through exposure to the wonders of culture in Saudi Arabia and beyond. One of its four exhibition spaces is the Knooz (Treasures) gallery (also known as the Islamic Civilization Gallery), which curators are in the process of developing in both content and design. This gallery will be designed with specic awareness of the criteria by which Saudis relate to and judge their art. Indeed one of the primary objectives for the gallery will be to instil a greater sense of national identity through fostering pride in Saudi culture and history while simultaneously expanding the public’s horizons by celebrating its shared faith, history and art with the rest of the Muslim world. It is therefore crucial to consider the relationships between the visual culture of the pre-modern Islamic world and the creation of identities in the modern nation of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
